President Donald Trump’s sweeping education orders could embolden Texas efforts to reshape the way millions of children learn and educators teach, reorienting classrooms in a more conservative direction.
State Republican leaders already champion ideas central to Trump’s recently signed executive orders, with a focus on race and gender discussions, patriotic lessons and a push for taxpayer money to flow toward tuition at private schools.
GOP leaders are also pushing for more Christianity in Texas schools — from Bible lessons in textbooks to the Ten Commandments in classrooms.
The confluence of Trump’s actions and Texas’ nascent legislative session is energizing conservative groups keen to see changes in the state’s education landscape.
“Patriots – parents – have said, ‘We’ve had enough of what’s going on, and we’re fighting back.’ And I’m so glad to see that President Trump is leading this at the federal level,” said Mandy Drogin, with the conservative Texas Public Policy Foundation. “We are taking back the future for our children.”
Opponents fear the president’s actions could pit parents against teachers, harm vulnerable children and contribute to an environment of fear for educators.
Texas AFT spokeswoman Nicole Hill said the executive orders feel like the nationalization of policies the state has pushed for over the past five years.
“I do fear that other states in the country are going to experience what our public schools have gone through,” Hill said. “We all know we have teachers and counselors and nurses and school staff running for the exits in our public schools.”
Roughly three-quarters of Texas public school teachers say they have seriously considered leaving their position in the past year, according to a 2024 Charles Butt Foundation poll. Recent rates of teacher turnover are far lower; attrition sits at about 12%.
Meanwhile, Trump’s actions may be celebrated among the state’s Republican leaders, but it’s unclear how they will play out on the ground.
Texas’ 1,200 school districts have wide latitude in what gets taught in their classrooms and how.
For example, the Republican-controlled State Board of Education recently gave its seal of approval to instructional materials that infuse Bible stories into everyday lessons. Dallas ISD Superintendent Stephanie Elizalde – who leads the state’s second-largest district – has already said she doesn’t plan to use the Bluebonnet Learning materials.
The ACLU of Texas and other religious freedom organizations on Thursday urged other district leaders to reject the materials, too.
It’s unclear, too, how the president’s threat to withhold federal funding could play out.
Local property tax revenue makes up the bulk share of Texas public schools’ funding, followed by state money. Generally, Texas schools get less than 10% of their money from federal sources, not including major one-time grants such as pandemic aid.
Momentum for school vouchers
Trump told the Education Department to use discretionary money to prioritize school choice programs and give states new guidance on how they can use federal money to support K-12 voucher programs.
Trump campaigned on a promise to expand school choice, long a key part of the Republican education agenda. He promised to create “massive funding preferences” for states that adopt universal school choice — a policy that lets almost all families use taxpayer-funded education money to attend private schools, homeschooling or other options beyond local public schools.
It is not clear how far Trump could move the needle with federal money alone.
But Gov. Greg Abbott has expended tremendous political and financial capital to promote a universal school-choice option in Texas. He travelled the state promoting the idea at private Christian schools, declared it a priority and spent his war chest ousting House Republicans who opposed the bill in previous sessions.
“Gov. Abbott fully supports President Trump’s efforts to expand school choice nationwide,” spokesman Andrew Mahaleris said. “When it comes to education, parents matter, and families deserve the ability to choose the best education opportunities for their children.”
This week lawmakers held their first hearing on an education savings account program that would allow families to use roughly $10,000 of public money on private schools. Parents of home-schoolers would get at least $2,000 per student.
State budget writers have set aside $1 billion to fund the first year of a universal school-choice program, which if approved would begin in the 2026-27 school year. Costs would rise annually until hitting $3.75 billion in 2030, according to the state’s fiscal analysis. The total estimated cost of four years would be $11 billion.
“Every parent will be empowered with educational freedom,” Drogin said. “The parents that are in the public schools will have the opportunity to push back on administrators that have bought in this ‘woke mind virus.’”
Opponents of a voucher-style program say it will funnel money away from the public schools that serve the vast majority of Texas children. Private schools don’t have to accept every student and are not held to the same accountability standards as public ones.
A Texas sixth-grader, who uses a wheelchair, spoke out against the proposal during Tuesday’s Texas Senate committee hearing.
“My mom has tried to get me into private schools before, but they said ‘no’ because I’m in a wheelchair,” Felicita Piñón said. “Public schools are the only place where my siblings and I can go and feel included.”
How students are taught
This week Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick rolled out his priority education bills that touched on school choice, placing the Ten Commandments on public campuses and stressing the dangers of communism to students.
This builds on efforts Texas already adopted, some of which were echoed in the White House’s orders Wednesday night. For example, Trump said schools must stop teaching certain concepts dealing with race and gender or risk losing their federal money.
The order calls for “eliminating federal funding or support for illegal and discriminatory treatment and indoctrination in K-12 schools, including based on gender ideology and discriminatory equity ideology.”
Texas banned “critical race theory” from schools in 2021. The law prohibits teaching certain concepts about race; develops a civics training program for teachers; and largely bars schools from giving credit to students for advocacy work.
It urges educators to teach only that slavery and racism are “deviations” from the founding principles of the United States. Several founding fathers owned slaves.
Critical race theory, also called CRT, is an academic framework that probes the way policies and laws uphold systemic racism — such as in education, housing or criminal justice.
Among the tenets of critical race theory are that racism is commonplace; progress for underrepresented groups is encouraged only to the extent that changes benefit the status quo; and that concepts such as color-blindness and meritocracy are myths to be rejected.
Conservative politicians, parents and commentators in recent years have conflated equity work in education — including diversity and inclusion efforts, anti-racism training and multicultural curricula — with critical race theory. Trump has railed against the theory as he interprets it.
When Texas’ law passed, teacher groups warned it was vague and could have a chilling effect on classroom discussions. They worried the law would make it harder for them to teach about America’s true past and present.
Some education advocates worry that “chilling effect” could be exacerbated by Trump’s orders and the tense political environment.
Recently, a group used hidden-cameras and “undercover reporting” to secretly record school employees discussing their compliance with laws that touch on transgender students’ rights and district diversity efforts.
This week, Abbott called for criminal and civil investigations into Irving ISD after one such video showed a school administrator discussing transgender students playing on sports teams that align with their gender identity despite the state’s ban.
Drogin pointed to the video as one example of the “nonsense” done by public school administrators.
Hill, meanwhile, said “the vast majority of people who go to work in our public schools, in whatever capacity, go there because they want to provide a safe space for kids to learn.”
The Associated Press contributed to this article.
The DMN Education Lab deepens the coverage and conversation about urgent education issues critical to the future of North Texas.
The DMN Education Lab is a community-funded journalism initiative, with support from Bobby and Lottye Lyle, Communities Foundation of Texas, The Dallas Foundation, Dallas Regional Chamber, Deedie Rose, Garrett and Cecilia Boone, The Meadows Foundation, The Murrell Foundation, Ron and Phyllis Steinhart, Solutions Journalism Network, Southern Methodist University, Sydney Smith Hicks and the University of Texas at Dallas. The Dallas Morning News retains full editorial control of the Education Lab’s journalism.